Reality Check | A new twist on the DRM

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IN A RECENT ESSAY, 'Government Data and the InvisibleHand' (GCN.com/1226), a group of renownedPrinceton University professors proposes that the nextadministration achieve government transparency by requiring publicgovernment Web sites to use 'an infrastructure that'exposes' the underlying data.'

That is the same guidance that the Federal EnterpriseArchitecture Data Reference Model makes to improve cross-agencyinformation sharing. The two approaches attack the problem fromdifferent sides of the same information-sharing coin: one from anexisting infrastructure perspective (bottom-up) and the other frompublic Web sites (top-down).

But if DRM 2.0 was released in December 2005, why do thePrinceton professors need to write their article at all? Why are wenot already there?

The main reason is that, with a few exceptions, the DRM has noeffective forcing function ' that is, a means of makingagencies get on board. As a result, it languishes. We have the roadmap to where we need to go, but not many are willing to pay for thegas to get there.

In many ways, the problem with information sharing is the same.It's a nice idea that is easy to look at as a luxury and nota necessity ' thus the need for a forcing function. At theHomeland Security Department, the forcing function for the DRM wasthe requirement to use the National Information Exchange Model forthe agency's exchange layer. This requirement has beeneffective and drives the entire data management effort. But whatabout agencies that don't use NIEM?

A possible tack is to align information management with aservice-oriented architecture initiative. However, most SOAinitiatives are in their infancy and too immature to make asignificant impact. Thus, we are left with architecture forexposing data for information sharing without the impetus toimplement it.

So how do we break this logjam? That is where the Princetonproposal shines. It recommends that public Web sites publish databased on an infrastructure that is identical to the one proposed inthe DRM. That is an important strategic shift from the distributedmanner in which it is done now.

Many government Web sites are manual creations ' they areseparate from the information technology systems that produce thedata. Government Web sites are more a public relations functionthan an IT function. Answering new questions that crop up inresponse to world events involves a manual fire drill in which anarmy of administrators people scurry around collecting informationto publish on the Web site. That process is notoriously unreliableand inefficient. And it is analogous to the state of informationsharing before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The DRM was launched in response to the need for automatedinformation sharing. It lays out a framework that creates aninfrastructure to expose the underlying data, as the Princetonprofessors recommend. That framework should be created andconnected to public Web sites as just another flavor of informationsharing.

In other words, the infrastructure that the Princeton professorsrecommend is the same information-sharing infrastructure requiredto successfully implement the mandates of the Intelligence Reformand Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

That makes a lot of sense because it is an excellent forcingfunction for both public Web sites and a DRM-driveninformation-sharing infrastructure.

Sharing data with the public is no different in terms of dataquality, timeliness and relevance than sharing data with externalagencies. They are just another consumer of data with a differentprivilege set.

Thus, we have an excellent solution that can potentially killtwo birds with one stone: the public's need for governmenttransparency through exposed data and the government's needfor coordinated action through information sharing. I hope the nextadministration heeds the professors' sage advice.

Daconta (mdaconta@acceleratedim. com) is chief technologyofficer at Accelerated Information Management and former metadataprogram manager at the Homeland Security Department. His latestbook is titled 'Information as Product: How to Deliver theRight Information to the Right Person at the RightTime.'